The present invention relates to the detection of three-dimensional information using a projected point or line of light.
More particularly, the invention relates to overcoming the problem that in such detection the signal received by a camera or photo detector provided for this purpose, often suffers from too little or too much light being present at various locations of the item or image being illuminated.
Systems employing the aforementioned type of detection are used, for example, where it is important to determine by position of points and objects (e.g. robot arms, to name only one example) in three-dimensional space. In such systems a moving point (dot) of light--or else a moving line of light--will be projected upon the object (item) to be illuminated, and the illumination of each area on the object which is touched by the light, will be sensed (and converted into a signal) by a camera or photo detector provided for this purpose. A serious problem with this is that the received signal often suffers from the fact that at one or some locations of the scanned object there may be too much light, whereas at others there may be too little light, so that the final reading is incorrect.